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Back in 2015 I wrote a book for TROM about humans and the machines they have created. It is called the Human Machine and you can read it here.

People were asking these bots existential questions like what is the purpose of life:

I remember the Google supercomputers generating these weird images and the news outlets calling them "machines dreaming". Meaning, how machines dream:

And that Pepper robot that you could talk to...

These came after a few years of another hype: the self driving cars that were about to revolutionize transportation. In the book Automated Autonomous World that I wrote for TROM in 2013 , I partially fell for that hype and wrote in a very non-skeptical way about them.

That book may be removed from TROM when we do a cleanup this month in preparation for the upcoming TROM II documentary.

Back to AI.

In 2016 I started to be more and more aware of how the tech world is full of bullshit and bullshitters. For that reason I chose to present tech that was already there, working, and when it was just in testing phases I would present it as such and link to scientific papers about that tech.

When it came to AI I already smelled the bullshit. The stupid fear that AI will take over the world, and all of that crap. But I said let's educate myself. And so I said the best way is to understand a bit how these things work. I took several courses and read a bunch of stuff. I learned how AIs can categorize objects:

Of course I only scratched the surface of these since they are complex. But I got a solid understanding I think. I realized that these are Statistical Software. Added with a bunch of filters and rules. They are complex, cool, interesting, but nothing WOW in terms of how they work. I learned that data and computer power is what makes the difference. I realized how non-magical these AI look when you have a clue about how they work. The end result is mesmerizing only for those who have a very dim understanding of these pieces of software.

I then talked about how they compared to humans. And of course the conclusion was that AI is just a complex set of statistical software with filters and rules and a lot of data, and has nothing to do with either artificial or intelligence (whatever that means).

Anthropomorphizing

That's a new word that I learned while writhing this book. It means "to ascribe human form or attributes to (an animal, plant, material object, etc.).". That's what AI are mostly.

The present.

7 years later and the AI "revolution" has resurfaced again. This time it seems even more mesmerizing, although not so much for me. I fee like I've seen this before...

ChatGPT and the like, Stable Diffusion, DALL·E, now they have different names and do similar things. They are fun to play with. Can create some weird images out of text, something I was showcasing in 2016 in another book about Language.

And the craze is starting again with people thinking these AIs will revolutionize the world, or will take over, and then no more jobs, no more artists, no more life. If you look again at how these work, they seem a lot less mesmerizing. The companies that push them use anthropomorphism to make them sound like they "think" and are like humans: neural nets, learning, hallucinating, and so forth. In fact they are still the same statistical machines that produce probabilities and that results in interesting outcomes.

Without going into specifics I recommend this funny video that explains the entire situation quite well: A.I. is B.S. ->>> https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=ro130m-f_yk

Also read through the sources of that video.

When I asked chatgpt about TROM I got this:

You see although it says some true things, it also says some entirely false things. Because this AI only knows how to put words together. Has no clue about anything else. And it will always produce well written sentences that can be totally wrong. Thus, this chatbot is entirely useless for factual information. And if you think it will get better and better, for one let's wait for that and then "hype" it, but second it may never be able to due to how it works (statistical prediction of what words go with what other words).

When I tell chatgpt that the project was not created by those two dudes, it invents new ones:

And so on it goes:

AI is ASS!

AI is actually Anthropomorphized Statistical Software, or ASS :)

We may find good uses for this ASS, maybe when they only rely on a main source of information like some specific research papers and provide exact quotes and sources. They are fun to play with for a bit tho. They may help us create more creative content or video/photo/audio effects. But "they" are as much as "they" as websites are "they". Depends what websites we are talking about. Same here, these ASS are diverse and made for a diverse set of purposes.

But what it is clear to me is that the HYPE is just that, a HYPE. Pushed by companies who want to make these ASS more appealing and sell them, by the bloggers and youtubers who jump on the hype train for clicks and views, by the media that does the same. Combine that with the fact that we live in a dumbed-down society where humans are just workers who have no time to learn/digest any of these things, and we are faced with an Idiotic society that has no clue about any of these.

Our trade based society is at fault here again, for incentivizing humans to hype these things all the time, in order to trade them. And for the fact that it keeps us all busy idiots for the sake of trading to survive. This has created a Land of Confusion.

Welcome to Earth.

#tromlive

School can be seen as an abusive and inefficient system that has little to nothing to do with "education".

In a trade-based society the parents NEED to trade themselves in a job, so these kids need to be "livestocked" somehow. That's what school is, a place where kids can be while their parents trade to survive in this society. More to that, Universities almost exclusively prepare these young creatures to become workers, like their parents.

All in all, kids go to school to compete, memorize, get ready to be workers. NOT to be EDUCATED.

If humans could have a decent life without trading in this society, they could have the time to engage with their kids, discover, learn, enjoy. And schools could be places where kids of all ages can go because they want to. A place where experts can teach them about the world and how to do something productive.

EXAMPLES:

Tell kids: See this red dot? This is the farthest thing we can take a photo off. They call it a "star". And you show them a real photo taken by the WEBB telescope. From there on you and your class of kids will investigate what this red dot is, and in the process you'll teach kids about light, physics, maths, distances, stars, the universe.

Or show kids a real dinosaur bone and tell them: Our mission is to understand how old it is and what creature this is. And thus you can go into a journey of discovering what geology is, paleontology, rocks and fossils, and so forth.

Or tell them that our mission is to build a robot. And they will learn mechanics, programming and so forth.

We could create real schools where kids can become curious and learn so much about our world. So that they can become the next Einsteins, the next Teslas, the next ones who can discover new things.

That's the world we should have had by now....

And we wont be able to have it unless we change the trade-based society into a tradeless society. Where humans are not forced to trade in order to survive. Where humans like "teachers" can engage and develop such schools as explained above, to have time for that, not to go to school because that's their job since they have to pay their rent so they are forced to do it.

A few years ago we made a video: Rethinking Education https://videos.trom.tf/w/2y5RSgvREzT6mZnwonqKMN - where we go in depth abotút this.

#TradeRuinsEverything #tromlive

Tio

2021-02-19 02:45:30

05. Rethinking Education

We create documentaries out of our eBooks. These documentaries are entirely based on the books themselves but they may differ here and there in terms of the script and overall presentation, but in general they are the same as the books. All sources for all of our videos are greatly detailed/sourced in the books they are based upon. These videos are also available without the narration voice so anyone can dub them into any language.

This video is based on this book https://www.tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-df_6654/1/

Books

DETAILS We approach a wide variety of topics through our books. Some books are small (a few tens of pages), some are huge (hundreds of pages).

^TROM

We Live In The Age of The Bullshitter is an interesting and truthful article about the biggest bullshitters of our time. Musk, Peterson, Steven Pinker, Trump, Dr. Oz and the like.

Elon Musk is the richest man on planet Earth. He is also a complete bullshitter. He makes false claims about the cars he makes. He constantly promises that he is going to accomplish things that he never, in fact, accomplishes. In March 2020, he made the confident COVID-19 prediction that “based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April.” After convincing cities around the country that his “Boring Company” was going to build tunnels that would alleviate traffic congestion for low, low prices, Musk’s company simply went silent after municipal governments asked it to follow through on its commitments. 

They talk about a recently famous guy named Sam Bankman-Fried who "had committed himself to the “Effective Altruism” movement, which aims to achieve maximal moral goodness through benevolent acts and philanthropy". He was a crypto-rich-man. Basically the same Musk but instead of playing the money game he was playing the cryptocurrency game. He got caught stealing and lying. He was living like a rich man. You know, all of that.

There are many naive minds out there thinking that you can create honest businesses, you can trade fairly and do good through trading. This is almost never the case as these examples, and millions of others, prove.

Jordan Peterson sells books and makes money out of being so "radical" and yet unscientific. Pinker does the same. But real scientists are the ones you never heard of, the ones that do the work and not sell books and become viral online. To trust these figures is as naive as trusting Dr. Oz.

One of the problems is that for-profit media has a very bad set of incentives. For instance, every time Elon Musk makes some confident prediction about how he is going to implant chips in human brains or build a Mars colony or tunnel under Miami or whatever, tech websites are faced with a choice. They can print a story with the headline “MUSK SAYS BRAIN CHIPS COMING IN SIX MONTHS” or they can ignore Musk’s bluster until he offers proof that he has actually invented one of the things he keeps promising to invent. To ignore Musk is to sacrifice the precious clicks that a new Musk prediction will inevitably garner. Thus a for-profit tech journalism website faces a conflict between its financial self-interest and its integrity. In a time when it’s tough for media outlets to survive, it’s hard to turn down the clicks.

The author tries the waters but does not go for a swim. This is unfortunate because the cause of these issues is in plain sight: our trade based society.

Here's how it works as an example:

Musk is a trader and does everything he can to maximize his advantage being pushed by this competitive environment of trade. When he buys and sells, and he is also entangled with investors and clients from all sides, he (the man) cannot be unbiased. Thus, he is biased. He will exaggerate the claims about his businesses, lie, deceive, and all of that, to keep himself afloat and to swim in that sea of trades.

The people who follow Musk in his quest, from employees to his Twitter followers, are either forced to follow what he says and do like he does (his employees who have no other choice since they have to trade to survive), or the busy idiots who trade in other ways, keeping themselves busy all the time, not able to digest any information very well or much at all. So they can follow the HE, the man, whatever he says.

So far we have the rich man (the celebrity) and the idiots (the consumed ones). All created by the same trade-based society that keeps us busy and idiots, specialized on one thing (most of the time useless and mindless), and wants us to compete all the time and get better traders.

Lastly we have the media.

Guess what media wants? Same as Elon Musk or his fanboys: more for themselves. More clicks means more views, means more attention trading, means you can transform that into a currency and then stuff. The media is rich and wants to get richer, so it is very well incentivized to publish whatever crap sells. And thus they sell these bullshitters to the consuming idiots. Simple.

The rich-celebrity + the consumer idiots + the for-profit-media = a dumb down society.

Voila. Mystery solved!

All of us are victims of the same system of trade. And as long as we live in the same system, nothing will change.

Oh look "leaders" are still meeting to talk about climate change - https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/11/1130832 how cute!

They have also started to ban all advertising because they rightly say that this is only going to create more needless consumption. I am so happy about that. Online or offline, ads are illegal.

They are working with all governments around the world to make a global transportation system that is trade-free, so that we phase out cars entirely. Universal healthcare is also on the agenda together with trade-free education. Two meals a day for everyone, trade-free access to the Internet, investing a lot of resources in non-meat food alternatives, and kick-starting a massive sharing platform (online/offline) so that we can all share the vast amounts of wasted and unused stuff that we have around. Even sharing a room/place to stay. How amazing! This, they hope, will incentivize people to re-use, rather than buy useless shit all the time.

Lastly, they realize that laws and rules do not work, so their overall approach is to create a better society from within the current one. One that does not rely on trade but on share. This way we can make companies and profiteers obsolete, with time. The focus will be on how to protect us and the nature, using renewable energies, less polluting practices, and so forth, since there is no incentive to do otherwise. All, while decoupling ourselves from the need for trade. Have a lot more free time, get more educated, get involved.

GO UNITED NATIONS! Let's do it folks! #tromlive

Soft drink giant Coca-Cola Co.’s sponsorship of the flagship U.N. climate conference, known as COP27, sparked an online backlash and highlighted broader concerns about corporate lobbying and influence.

Source: PBS.

This is very concerning but not surprising. They seem untouchables.

This entities have an incentive to keep on trading, because the society is built this way. If we do not move away from a trade-based society to one where trade is obsolete, then we are not going to change anything. Period.

A company that trades sugary water in a plastic bottle, cannot care about the environment. At least not much at all. Their profits, the competition with their competitors, all of that enchains them to care about their own business regardless.

We will continue to voice these truths via TROM. And if you want to help, you voice them too!

#tromlive

There is this massive myth on a global scale, almost like a huge conspiracy, that humans are predisposed to being like this or like that. Predisposed to becoming depressed, ADHD is an illness, sexual orientation is inborn, violence can be detected in one's brain, and so forth.

This notion that humans have a certain biology and their behavior is based on that.

False.

From sexuality to mental disorders, violence or anything else. There are no genes, no chemicals, nothing biological that can predict any such behaviors. None.

We should start to abolish this mentality. This approach is succulently pushed by companies who sell the "miracle" drugs, and everyone is hypnotized by the cattle-society practice: treat humans like they are on a conveyor belt. Feel angry, sad, and all that? Well probably you have a "disease". Take this pill! Bye!

Anyway. Here is a recent publication by Joanna Moncrieff that debunks the myth of the "chemical imbalance" of depression. And here a more general overview of how depression cannot be linked to any bio-chemical marker.

Some very important quotes from this group of proper scientists that have the dignity and courage to remain scientists:

I have shown that family, twin, adoption, and molecular genetic studies have failed to provide scientifically valid evidence that genes play a role in causing depression. Combined with the recent findings by Moncrieff and colleagues that serotonin is not associated with depression, the idea of MD as a medical condition is in serious trouble.

To understand the true causes of depression, we must focus on family (including abuse and trauma), social, and political environments, including racial, gender, class, and other types of oppression/discrimination. We must address people’s increasing social isolation and disconnection from each other, lack of meaning and purpose, consumerism, and fears of present or future calamities such as pandemics, climate change, and nuclear war. The idea of depression as a medical/genetic condition must be reevaluated, and non-medical prevention and intervention strategies should be promoted.

And

“suffering as being rooted in individual rather than social causes, leading individuals to think that it is them rather than the economic and social system in which they live that is at fault and in need of reform.

It is this trade-based society that makes humans sad, depressed, angry, demotivated and so forth. FIX SOCIETY!

#tromlive
#TradeRuinsEverything

Here's another example of how people are entirely confused about what is free and what is not, and why our trade-free approach makes so much sense.

We have added this peer to peer file sharing app to TROMjaro's Library: SoulSeek. This app is great. It allows you to connect with others directly, and share files with them. No server involved. We wanted to share our VideoNeat library on the network. However if you look closely they limit your experience. And if you donate currency to them you get this:

So, it is free, but you have to pay to unlock certain features....makes so much sense indeed!

Actually they call those trades, donations. And the word and concept of "donation" got ruined alongside that of "free". Donations should be voluntary and not used for the purpose of trade. If you "donate" currency to me in return for some features, then that is a trade. You are buying from me. As simple as that.

Therefore our concept of trade free is so simple and destroys all of these nonsensicalities: What Am I Trading? Ask that. And if you do, then you realize that you need to trade currency for Soulseek to give you more features. Therefore this app is not trade-free.

The reason it was added to our TROMjaro library is that either we could not detect this trade since they are charlatan enough to hide them well, or it was not present when the app was added. Needless to say it was immediately removed.

We need more than ever this "trade as the original of most problems" approach and the "trade-free" antidote. Without them we are going into a deep and ugly confusion. A black hole of that! #tromlive

Reading this article about libadwaita and how pity the arguments are in favor of using it. I was expecting more.

Basically they argue that they use libadwaita since custom themes were not always perfect and people were reporting issues with apps because of that, and the devs were annoyed because these were issues with the themes and not the app itself. That’s the main idea. Such a weak argument. Let me explain.

1. Linux is variety and it will continue to be. Get used to it, Gnome!

We are talking about Linux here. Multiple kernels, multiple distros, multiple desktop environments. This is a world of variety so of course there will be some sort of inconsistency in some regards. If I use theme A and 1 out of 10 apps doesn’t look that good, then I think that’s acceptable considering this huge variety in the Linux world. So Gnome seems to not understand that this is the nature of Linux. And they won’t change it. What now, make the Gnome apps not run on XFCE, Mate, Arch, kernel 5.4 just because they are not the official Gnome + whatever kernel they use, and they may not be 100% looking and behaving like on the original gnomiverse?!

Friends, the gnome extensions also break the gnome desktop here and there, from theme to functionality. I’ve used it. We all know that. You wanna bet their next move is to not officially support any extensions?

Soon Gnome won’t support anything but Gnome. Just so that 100% of their few apps look as they want them to look. Good luck with that!

2. They create more complaints than before.

It is ridiculous to argue that users were seeing apps that look broken and they reported that to the devs, while not realizing that now they create an even bigger issue: gnome is a small part of the linux world, and if gnome enforces certain themes for their gnome apps, then users will see that these apps do not respect the system’s themes and…guess what…report that to the devs! You ain’t solving anything, you create more problems.

3. The problem is not as huge as they make it look like.

With some tweaks you can make the GTK and QT apps sync in terms of theming, plus force flatpaks to respect the system’s theme too, at least for some of them. In this way most apps look as they should. I have tested thousands of apps so far for our TROMjaro Linux, and we have implemented a robust theming system, granted hacky when it comes to, you guessed it, libadwaita.

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There, some 700 apps are published (I test more than I publish). I’d say 98% look great. With a custom theme. You can find screenshots for all apps posted there, from TROMjaro.

As an example, they showcase how PoP OS and Ubuntu fail with the theming. They say look at Ubuntu how badly it deals with the default Gnome Fonts app:

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Bad contrast, black font preview with a dark theme. Guess how the same app looks on TROMjaro?

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See? Theming done right. On Ubuntu is not that bad either, but how come TROMjaro, a 1.5 men team, does it better than Ubuntu!? Because we care about theming! It is not that difficult.

Here it is with a light theme in TROMjaro:

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Looks Perfect!

Another example they show us: look at the Characters Gnome app in PoP OS, again poor contrast and they said misplaced characters - I suppose they are referring to the dividing lines and how characters overlap:

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I agree. Poor contrast. Not in TROMjaro:

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You could say characters misplaced too…but then I installed the “pure” Gnome Characters with Libadwaira and guess what? Yeah…characters misplaced:

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Speaking of that, if I see this app in libadwaita form on my System, not respecting the theme (buttons, top bar, dark mode, font) then I will send a message to the devs. Just saying!

Lastly they show us the app Contrast in PoP OS, and they say " White background in Contrast":

What do they want to say, that the color pick boxes are white on a Dark theme? If so, not in TROMjaro:

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They exaggerate the issue by showcasing some PoPular OSes that do a bad job at implementing a proper theme. But I bet they do a bad job ALSO because Gnome or others, are very unfriendly at letting others theme their apps. So you have to kinda find hacky solutions like we did. The irony…if they made it easier for developers to theme their apps, then there will be less inconsistencies…

4. Gnome could still fix this nonsense.

So they show us OBS as an example of how some QT apps are also an issue when it comes to custom theming. And this gives birth to two main issues with Gnome. First, they say look at OBS it looks like so on any system regardless of the theme:

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And I agree. It looks like that. That’s because OBS enforces their own theme, but in settings one can choose the system theme. And they say if you do that in KDE it still doesn’t look that good:

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Poor contrast: dark button icons on a dark theme. And TROMjaro suffers from this too:

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But let’s be honest, it is not that fuckin’ bad. I’ll put up with this for a very very few apps, and have a consistent desktop experience overall, rather than having 100 apps with 100 different themes. Any-day! On top of this I’d report this to the theme dev and icon dev, so they can fix these. Am sure they can. If not, it is ok. Relax Gnome!

But the core point here is that some apps respect the users and give them this option. If I dislike this “baaad” contrast in OBS I will select one of their built-in themes. They allow it. So why not is Gnome doing the same? Be friendly with the theme developers and make libadwaita easily themable, and also add an option to let users select a system’s theme. This way you can have your favorite libadwaita theme for any Gnome apps, plus a “broken” (as you think) system theme that the users can choose. See? Solution!

Second point about their QT example: is the Gnome team realizing the irony here? You show me a QT app that looks a little bit bad, a little bit, when themed in KDE with the system’s theme. But if OBS was GTK + Libadwaita it would not respect the theme at all! And no way to even let you select the system’s theme. Which one is better? Are these people blind, or am I going crazy?

Final thoughts:

Gnome sees itself as an isolated thing. Like a cult almost. As if you use Gnome only with the Gnome apps, preferably with Debian and only install the Gnome Apps from flatpak. This way you get the “pure” Gnome experience. But people on Arch + XFCE also wanna use the Gnome Apps, They have no freakin’ Gnome control center to change the theme to dark/light mode or select a highlight color. Gnome does not think about anyone but the devoted gnome users it seems.

They removed the top bar from the GTK apps, disabling a plethora of features for many systems, such as minimizing to the top bar a window, better integration with whatever desktop you are using, right click options in some cases, top panel integration, and more. Now the top bar in gnome apps looks huge and has no functionality other than saving a tiny bit of vertical space, as if that was important. They also killed the global menus…and now they wanna kill the theming.

But the thing is that they kill themselves. They might be cocky as to how big Gnome is, but Linux is far bigger. TROMjaro still have a proper theming, even for the libadwaita apps via a hack, and still has a top pannel integration with the windows, and global menus. There are only a few apps, the Gnome ones, that ruin a bit the user experience: no global menus for them and no proper integration with the top bar.

Gnome does not care about the users if they remove features that are useful and necessary. They fantasize to become the Mac of Linux. And they may achieve their dream. And we should not care. Linux is much bigger.

Think about this:

If you use Debian + Pure Gnome + apps from their official repos, then at best your experience is limited. Gnome has a few apps compared to the vast universe of the Linux apps. And any other app that you install on this config, and is not a GTK LIbadwaita app, will look different on your desktop. No light/dark mode will work via the Gnome Control center…no highlight color…the window buttons will be different, the font may be different, the icon set for these other apps may be different. IN-CON-SIS-TEN-CY. So Gnome is a failure if they wanna be so purists. It only makes it a bit more annoying for some Linux users, and is breaking things on the desktop.

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Here's a post Kostas, an old friend of TROM, sent to us for reshare:

What if we treated everyone like they were babies?

When someone suggests that the goal of our society should be to offer everything to everyone for free, no matter if they work or if they offer something to society, no matter if they are "good" persons or not, usually the reaction by other people is strongly against this opinion and that's probably "normal".

Because, you see, in our lives we are used to something a bit different: a few things are earned without effort. So, it's probably "normal" to view such ideas at first as "extreme" and reject them as something "utopian", "unachievable" or "very distant from our times".

Nevertheless, how many of you have thought about the following?

There's truly a certain period in the lives of all of us (at least in what we call the "Western world"), which is very similar to such an "utopia".

When we are fetuses in the womb of our mother, we get our food literally without doing anything. Just because we exist. Noone has anything to expect from us and we have no responsibilities whatsoever. And when we are born, all people around us care for us, so that we live as comfortably as possible.

Usually, the first years of our lives are the best, happiest and the most carefree. We haven't been, yet, inside the awful trade game, so everyone is trying to make our lives as pleasant as possible, without the need to offer something in order to earn this privilege. Food, clothing, education, entertainment are all offered abundantly by our caregivers.

I already hear some voices complaining: "Yes, but babies and children are unable to offer anything, that's why we offer them all they need! They can't go to work!"

Yes, that's correct! If babies could work we would send them to make some profits for the privileged, super-rich people... And maybe they could keep something for themselves: A small glass of milk per day perhaps?? :)

The truth is that we care for them because, indeed, they can't help themselves yet. And of course, it's the right thing to do.

In contrast, of course, to what happens later in our lives, where, even to be able to eat, we are forced to work, or have income from somewhere. With adulthood, we suddenly lose the privilege of being cared for and we need to "earn our living", so that we fulfill our assigned role as a well-tuned cog in the trade system.

But why would it be "bad"? What would we have to lose if we continued to care for all the people of the Earth, of all ages, as if they were incapable of providing something in return? Like they were babies for all their lives?

Honestly, I cannot think of a convincing answer. Every argument against it, sounds in my ears like the old, outdated opinion some "kid-experts" expressed in the past: "Don't give too many hugs to the child because you will spoil it!"

A real civilized society should generously offer everything to all its people, without asking for anything in return. With our material needs covered, we would contribute to society out of selfless love for our fellow man and out of optimism for the evolution of our species, but also of ourselves.

We know that it can happen if we really want to make it true. Humankind is capable of miracles if we work all together and we've proven that in the past.

Civilization Type One

Original article, in Greek, here.

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You know, there are others who fight the same fight, that you may not have heard of. And that's encouraging! #tromlive